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Comment by fapjacks | Hacker News Reader

But isn't this the big hardware developer's dream? Make some popular hardware and then create an app store for it? Seems that way. Leap Motion (worst hardware on Earth, man) did that. And I guess making it a walled garden is just the next step, if your hardware is really popular.

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This was probably a big part of why my Leap went back in it's box, and still sits in another box of crud most of the time. Rather than becoming a common piece of hardware that I could find supported by various software in my every day life, I'd have to specifically go looking for software in :their store: to use it.

Leap employee here. Have you tried the new Orion tracking software? It's like night and day, especially for VR.

I honestly haven't taken it out of the box since I moved a year ago. I'd have to look for it.

Though that doesn't address the point of my post. I'd be more inclined to use it if software through other stores (Windows Store, Steam) had Leap support built-in. Having a third-party store just for your hardware is off-putting.

Fair point. Right now most of the activity is taking place on our developer gallery (https://developer.leapmotion.com/gallery/), which is entirely free. But content distribution is definitely an issue. We have embedded Orion hardware that's being embedded into future HMDs, so I'd expect to see more in other stores once the input becomes standard (rather than a peripheral).

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